


I Bet My Life For You

by Ellienerd14



Series: Author’s Favourites [17]
Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Deaths are same as on the show, God this is sad, M/M, Other, Yes I'm late to the fandom, canon-typical angst, ref to self harm but not more graphic than canon, reverse au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-15 00:44:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16923402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellienerd14/pseuds/Ellienerd14
Summary: 'Now remember when I told you that's the last you'll see of meRemember when I broke you down to tearsI know I took the path that you would never want for meI gave you hell through all the years' - Imagine Dragons-In which Jem Walker dies at fourteen and raises from the dead a month later.After her return home to Roarton, Jem must deal with the guilt of the memories she can't bury.She tries to look at the bright side, but there's only so much dry humour can do to help you cope.





	I Bet My Life For You

**Author's Note:**

> I know I took the path that you would never want for me  
> I know I let you down, didn't I?  
> So many sleepless nights where you were waiting up on me  
> Well I'm just a slave unto the night
> 
> Now remember when I told you that's the last you'll see of me  
> Remember when I broke you down to tears  
> I know I took the path that you would never want for me  
> I gave you hell through all the years 
> 
> Lyrics from 'I bet my life' by Imagine Dragons which for me is really fitting of the Walker siblings relationship.

The funny thing is, after all this time, Jem doesn’t want to go home.

It’s a better option than the treatment centre, but it will be different, it will be awkward. There’s no easy transition to having a mostly dead daughter move back in.

Still, she’s in the car now, so it’s a bit late to say she’s changed her mind. It’s the same car and it’s all so familiar again - her Dad driving a little too fast and rambling on; she’s looking out the window on the endless stretch of motorway between Norfolk and Roarton.

The clothes she’s wearing aren’t her own clothes. Or if they are, she had forgotten them in the last four years since she died. But Jem knows it isn’t her shirt - she never would have picked anything so _pink._ She’ll have to change as soon as she can. Kieren would tease her.

Kieren’s not here to tease her now.

Mum tells her, gently, that he’ll probably be catching up with college work. (But shouldn’t he be finished with college by now?)

It’s not like he knows… and Jem can’t tell him.

It’s not like he would believe it. A scrawny (even if at the time, flesh hungry) fourteen year old pulling a grown man apart in the back of a supermarket for a snack (for survival), Kieren wouldn’t believe it. He wouldn’t want to believe it. He always saw the best of life, even when Jem was lying in hospital, sick of being sick, sick of everything.

That’s a lifetime ago now.

Jem will tell him, if he asks what she did in the Rising, that she wandered around confused. Jem will tell him, if he asks if she ate anyone (even if it wasn’t her, not really), that she fed off corpses that others killed (a baby bird can’t be called a murderer, if it’s mother chews the worm for him). Jem will tell him, if he asks anything, that she doesn’t remember.

Jem doesn’t think he’ll ask. Based off her parents, who didn’t mention the fact the last time they saw her, she was on her literal deathbed, Kieren will probably act like she’s back from a long summer camp. (A summer camp where they teach you that eating people isn’t your fault and how to put on face cream that makes you look passably alive.)

Kieren will hug her, she hopes, and then she feels stupidly childish.

She kicks the back of Mum’s chair: “Did you bring my mix CD?”

 

* * *

 

The funny thing is Jem can’t eat.

No one told her parents that, or they did and they just want to pretend. Just this once, she pretends with them, to chew on the gravy fumes.

(It’s funny because it has to be. Otherwise  it’s just tragic.)

Maybe they do know, because she never liked lamb much, and they don’t mention her full plate when Mum goes to clean up.

 _Two_ full plates, both untouched, because Kieren isn’t home yet.

Jem doesn’t help wash up and lingers by the window in her old room - untouched but cleaned, like they knew she was coming back - until she sees a blond head turn the corner.

She ducks, out of view, and runs downstairs to answer the door. Mum’s beat her to it and she catches wisps of conversation between them as Kieren stands with his arms crossed with one foot in the door.

“You didn’t tell us where you were going… Kier, you knew what was happening… too hungover to pick her up… she asked about you... and you missed dinner… yes it’s in the microwave… she looks healthier than when she was... alive… don’t ask me that!”

Kieren gives an angsty huff and kicks off his boots and trudges in the kitchen.

Mum looks up, spots her, smiles encouragingly.

“Tea Jem?”

She can’t drink either, without throwing up black goop, but Jem missed the comforting smell of Sue Walker’s tea and finds herself nodding anyway.

There’s a few beeps from the microwave as Kieren heats up his food.

Jem hangs back, glancing at her reflection in the mirror; Mum was right, she did look healthier than when she was alive with all the cover up makeup smeared on. Underneath she’s pale and her eyes are practically translucent.

“Sorry Mum,” Kieren’s saying, when he turns around and drops the mug. “Jem!”

She forces a smile. “Kieren.”

He forgets his food and wraps his arms around her, holding her but loosely, like she was delicate or contagious.

“Bloody hell,” he says, “my baby sister.”

He looks worse than her, if she’s honest. There’s a bruise on his face and bags under his eyes and raw scars on the little of his wrist she can see. Kieren could use some flesh mousse himself. His punk clothes are gone and replaced with several layers of jumpers.

“I’ll bring it in,” Mum says, ushering them out.

In the living room (is she supposed to be in a _living_ room?), the two siblings look at each other, unsure of where to start.

Jem wants to ask: why didn’t you come and get me with Mum and Dad?

Jem doesn’t want to ask: do you know I killed your best friend?

Jem wants to ask: did you miss me?

Jem doesn’t want to ask: did you have to kill anyone?

Kieren asks: “Do you want an updated CD?”

 

* * *

 

The funny thing is Jem knew Amy before.

Before they killed people.

Before they killed _him._

They shared a ward in hospital and played Uno between awful treatments that didn’t work for either of them, evidently.

Amy is smiling brightly, leaning on one of the gravestones in a swishy pink skirt.

“Nice epigraph. Did you pick it yourself?”

“I think my brother chose it,” Jem says, because it seems very Kieren - artsy and depressing.

 

**Jemima Alice Walker**

**1994-2009**

**Beloved daughter, sister, friend**

**Your light may be gone,**

**But at least we are linked,**

**Because we all lie beneath the stars.**

 

“How long you been back?” Amy asks.

“Three days. Under house arrest basically. It’s dangerous for ‘people with my delicate condition’. Nothing quite explains being a zombie like ‘delicate’.”

“Nasty word zombie. I prefer the undead.”

“The delicate undead,” Jem jokes, “sounds like a grunge band.”

Amy grins. “Fancy some change of scenery?”

“Like?”

“Day trip!” Amy declares, hooking their arms together.

“I can’t… Kier will worry.”

Amy winks. “Bring that handsome brother of yours along too.”

Jem shook her head. No way would Kieren agree to that. But still, being stuck at home again seems even worse.

“Just us.”

“We’ll go somewhere fun,” Amy promises, arms still intertwined, half dragging her in the direction of the only train station, “promise. Swear on my grave.”

 

* * *

 

The funny thing is Jem’s not the only one holding back information.

The reveal of the HVF comes when Kieren drags her back from the train station, four hours about she and Amy go to a fair in the next village along. Before he drags her home, he takes off his grey hoodie and thrusts his jacket at her.

“It’s not safe,” Kieren tells her, in a firm big brotherly tone.

Amy gives her a sad little wave as Jem leaves her. Jem pulls a face that hopefully conveys ‘I’m sorry my brother is acting like an idiot, please be my friend, you’re the only one who gets it all’.

Then she pulls up the hood and trails after her brother.

When they’re back at the house, Kieren pulls on another jacket. (But it was too late, Jem had already seen the scars, knew why they were there. She’s fourteen but she’s not stupid.)

“Jem, you didn’t tell me where you were going!”

“I was with Amy, she looked out for me.”

“She led you astray!” Kieren does some pacing, glancing out the window. “What if something had happened to you? We couldn’t lose you again.”

 _Again._ That single word is the closest thing to a conversation about her (delicate) undead state that they had.

Kieren’s voice is shaky, cracked, and guilt shoots through her. “Why did you leave?”

“I was curious.”

“About?”

Jem looks at her feet. “My grave. I wanted to look at my grave Kier because I’m dead!”

He stops pacing. Doesn’t turn. Gazes out the window. It’s all very melodramatic.

“If the Human Volunteer Force saw you, we’re all in trouble.”

Jem doesn’t ask who the Human Volunteer Force are, or what they volunteered to do during a zombie rising.

“They already hate me and having a little sister that’s-“ he pauses guiltily, “a… a PDS sufferer will only give them another excuse.”

Jem’s eyes land on her brother’s cheek. “I thought you got that…”

“I’m not a fighter Jem,” Kieren admits, “but I did what I could to help Mum and Dad.” (Like giving up college, for a while, she guesses.) “I didn’t join their patrol. I was the right age, they said, tried to make me. But, it was too risky,” he’s trembling, “and I knew they couldn’t cope with losing another child.”

”Wait-“

Kieren turns to look at her sternly. “Don’t do it again.” 

 

* * *

 

The funny thing is, Jem does it again, at the next opportunity.

Kieren works at the pub now, because all the schools closed down when the undead started crawling out the dirt, and he needs the money. (“Postponed,” Mum corrects, with a hint of optimism.)

Dad will be home from work in an hour, so Jem bundles up in Kieren’s coat. (She avoids looking at the portrait of Rick on the wall. She avoids looking at the portrait of herself, sickly with her eyes closed, too.)

This time, she goes to the woods. It’s far away from the pub and the supermarket and the house. No people to see her. 

She only wants to go to the clearing, but her feet take her to the cave. It’s the cave where she played with her brother, before it became a Kieren-and-Rick spot.

Jem hears footsteps and ducks in the darkness.

It’s not total darkness. There’s a torch on the floor and a camping lamp further in. Jem switches it on, flooding the cave with flickering light.

Kieren must have stayed here once because there’s a sleeping bag on the floor and a heavy bat propped up against the wall.

There’s also a missing poster, under the carved words declaring they would be together ‘4 ever’.

 

**MISSING**

**RICK MACY**

**LAST SEEN ON SUPPLIES RUN**

**CONTACT BILL MACY WITH THE HVF AT THE CHURCH**

**ALL INFORMATION APPRECIATED**

**STAY VIGILANT**

 

There’s a photo too, of Rick looking older, but still handsome, in military uniform and a twisting scar on his face. He looks grim and determined. He looks older too. (But so does Kieren. It’s the Rising. Or all the time sh missed out on.)

Jem drops the poster and closes her eyes but that’s a mistake too - then she remembers. The memory flickers behind her eyelids.

_“Jem?” Rick hand is hesitant on his gun, he lowers it, eyes wide, “Jem Walker?”_

_She lunges at him and-_

“No!” She screams, already running.

(That part isn’t funny.)

 

* * *

 

The funny thing is Jem thinks he might actually shoot her.

Bill Macy had never been popular in the Walker house. Jem tries to shudder at the gun pointed at her face. She wishes she hadn’t come alone.

“Found the Rotter.”

“I’m treated,” she pleads, shakily, “I wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

Bill glares. “A Rotter is still a Rotter, no matter drugs they pump in you.”

Jem considers running away, she’s probably faster than Bill… but he has a gun and there’s others from the HVF scattered in the forest.

A bullet in the back of a running ‘Rotter’ would be all too easy to get away with, Jem thinks.

“Bill?” A different member calls from the woods, “the Walker kid - the _other_ Walker kid - is following us again-“

“Not again,” Bill mutters, distracted, and Jem takes off.

Kieren is here, Kieren is here, Kieren is here, Kieren is here, Kieren is-

Arms grab her waist, yanking her back and tossing her to the ground. There’s another gun aimed at her.

“She’s just a kid,” Kieren is yelling, from somewhere close.

“It’s a Rotter,” Bill snarls back.

“Put the gun down stupid,” someone else is shouting - Amy?

It’s disordinate and loud and brings a flash of unwanted memory-

_Rick, face strained, gun at his side, reaching out to her, saying a name she vaguely recalls as her own: “Jem Walker?”_

_She lunges at him as a woman she’ll later remember as Amy pushes hard against his shoulders and he falls, heavily, head cracking on the-_

“Jem?” Amy _is_ here, pulling her up. The gun is gone.

“Why are you here?”

“Saving you dummy,” she answers. “Down the pub, having a lovely conversation with your gorgeous brother about undead segregation. And then we see the rest of the HVF runoff after a call about one of us in the woods. He knew it was you so we went to go rescue you.”

Kieren looks furious. “Jemima, I told you to stay away from the HVF and stay at home and you can’t do that.”

Jem crosses her arms. “You don’t understand what it’s like to be trapped there all day. I was losing my mind. I just wanted some fresh air.”

Kieren turns away. “Home now.”

Amy follows them, long skirts swishing, “he’ll cheer up. And you have me.”

“Just…” the anger seems to vanish as they stamp through the woods back home, Kieren reaches in the dark for her hand, “stay away from Bill Macy, he’s been furious since… Rick went missing.”

It’s the first time Jem’s heard Kieren say his name. She swallows guiltily, “Oh, Rick? I’m sorry.”

Kieren’s hand in her own shakes (in a way her own hand never will again). “I like to stay optimistic. There was never a body. He might come back. I don’t mind how.”

It breaks her heart how much Kieren seems to believe it.  

 

* * *

 

The funny thing is Jem didn’t think she could cry.

It’s not real tears. It’s the same black stuff she throws up and it drips down her face like streaky mascara.

The guilt is stirring in her gut.

She wants to tell Kieren. She doesn’t want him to know. She wishes Rick was here.

The black goop stains her pillow case as she pulls the blanket over her head.

_Why did she have to come back?_

 

* * *

 

Jem’s dreams are plagued by Rick. Again and again and again she relives the scene of pulling him apart. The hunger is back, like a phantom pain, but she always wakes up feeling sick.

Her parents don’t comment on her restless and the skin mousse covers up any signs that something is wrong.

“It’s alright, love,” Mum says, pulling her hair back as Dad pushes in the injection.

It’s when the flashbacks are unavoidable as the neurons connect to her brain again. It forces her to relive it over and over.

_Rick is already dead, lying there, gun still touching his fingertips. His last words was her name._

_Amy’s hands are smeared with his blood. She looks down and so are her hands._

_There’s a sound. Footsteps. A voice._

_“Rick!”_

_A young man in black with mournful brown eyes and a dirty blond fringe points a bat at them._

_“Stop!”_

_She feels a prickle of sadness._

_She feels hungry._

_“Jem?” The name again._

_She says nothing. She’s so hungry. So starving._

_“Stop it! You wouldn’t do this… if you were you.”_

_She isn’t ‘you’._

_The man reaches for Rick’s gun, edges it close to him, picks it up._

_“I said stop!”_

_She doesn’t stop._

_The man is crying. This means nothing for her._

_She doesn’t realise he was her brother once._

_She doesn’t remember his name._

“Kieren!”

“Kieren?” Her Mum repeats, “he’s upstairs love.”

 

* * *

 

The awful thing is this means he always knew the terrible thing that Jem has done.

Kieren’s lying on his bed and listening to his music when she storms in.

He pulls out a headphone, props himself up on his elbows. “You alright Jem?”

“I just had my Neurotriptyline shot.”

“Did something go wrong?” Kieren asks, brimming with undeserved brotherly concern. “Do you want to go down to the doctors? I can drive you.”

“I killed Rick!” Jem blurts.

The iPod slips through his hands. Kieren’s face is impossible to read. “I know. I was there.”

“The memory was scattered. All of my memories were broken apart and muddled. But Neurotriptyline helped and I saw you in my memory. You were there, Kier. You pointed his gun at me.”

“I didn’t shoot. I couldn’t hurt you. They gave us a number to call if we found PDS sufferers and then the government sends someone to pick them up and make them... better.”

“No, be mad!” Jem shouts, sick of this saintly forgiveness, “you loved Rick and I killed him! His last words were ‘Jem walker’. My name! And then I killed him. I was so… I- I.”

Kieren can cry real tears. It rolls down his cheeks, a dead giveaway, even if his expression is so carefully constructed. “I couldn’t stop it. I wasn’t in control.”

“Is that your excuse?”

She shakes her head. “No. Kier, I wouldn’t. Even if I was untreated… it counted as murder.”

“I should have done more to stop it,” Kieren says, “if I really loved him I would have. But I couldn’t kill my own sister. So I failed him.”

“Rick couldn’t either. He put his gun down when he saw me.”

“Oh,” Kieren plays with the zip on his hoodie, “I thought that- I don’t know what I thought. It’s all a bit numb after I saw you.”

Jem sits on the edge of his bed. “I’m sorry. I really am sorry Kier. I couldn’t stand the guilt; I just didn’t want you to hate me-“

“I couldn’t hate you.” Kieren scouts over to the edge of the bed and wraps his arms around her. “Jem, I could never hate you. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t my fault.”

“I miss him.”

Kieren’s arms shake around her. “I miss Rick too. I didn’t think I could survive losing him.”

“Is that why you hurt yourself?”

Kieren is quiet for a long while and Jem worries that she’s crossed a line.

Then: “I never wanted to join the HVF. But, it was Rick’s Dad group, so he didn’t have a choice. He used to say he would protect me. Rick had training with a gun. He was in the army for a few years and then he came back to help during the Rising. I was so happy to see him despite everything. But he was different. But he was still so kind. I always loved him. And he loved me, even if he didn’t say it as easily as I could.

“I went with him on food run. He only had to go once if I went with him. And it was nice to be alone with Rick almost like the old times. We would talk and talk and talk to stop ourselves getting scared. Until his radio stopped and I knew something was wrong.”

Jem couldn’t remember Rick having a radio. She could imagine what he would say though. (“Ren, you need herbal tea? Hipster.” Or, “after the Rising I’ll tell my Dad, promise, hurry up.”)

“And then I stole him from you.”

He ignores her. “It was so hard to go on. I wanted everything to go back to how it was. I felt myself slipping away.”

Jem holds onto his shirt tightly. “Kier-“

“It’s so stupid because we never thought that he would need protecting by me.”

They sit like that for a long time, weightless, Kieren holding her the way he used to when Jem got nightmares.

(This is not a nightmare. This is reality.)

(But for the first time since the treatment centre, living doesn’t seem so goddamn impossible.)

 

* * *

 

The day after the HVF memorial service, Jem follows her brother and Amy to the new graveyard. Kieren’s got roses in his hand. He doesn’t need the flowers though. There’s already a dozen bunches covering the memorial.

The memorial is for the dead and missing. Rick’s picture is in a large ornate frame in the centre. (Bill must have chosen the position.) Kieren’s roses are lost in a sea of petals.

Jem and Amy step back as he says something softly to photo.

“How do we keep on living?”

Amy hooks their arms together. “Good friends. Good fun. We have been given a second chance after our lives were stolen from us. So, we have to keep living it.”

Jem smiles at her optimism. “I guess.”

“If you don’t look on the bright side of things, you’ll have no reason to put one foot in front of the other.”

It’s not a bad philosophy really.

So that’s what Jem Walker - PDS sufferer, murderer, beloved daughter, sister, friend, cancer survivor, teen punk - does. Jem puts one foot in front of the other and walks out of the graveyard and into the future.

**Author's Note:**

> I literally just watched In The Flesh for the first time last week and it is so good! So, I'm a little late to the fandom but very much excited.  
> I feel like a teen punk Jem with survivors guilt would be a little different to actual canon Jem, so I hope she isn't too OOC.  
> Please let me know what you thought! And feel free to rec some ITF fics to me. 
> 
> Tumblr - @bazwillendinflames


End file.
